Baker Without Borders

Sufganiyot, round, jelly-filled doughnuts, are a popular Hanukkah treat. I finally got around to making these towards the end of the holiday, but they are so delicious that I plan to make them all year round. I lightly adapted a recipe from the New York Times, swapping orange zest for a pinch of cardamom, a…

The other day, I came across a recipe for turmeric sugar cookies on Food52. I loved the idea of brightening cookie dough with turmeric, an earthy, orange-hued spice used in savory cooking throughout the Middle East and South Asia. So I developed a recipe of my own. Turmeric pairs naturally with its cousin, ginger. Using that…

This is my coworker, Maria’s, twist on bougatsa, a breakfast pastry from northern Greece. It has a creamy pumpkin, milk, and semolina filling, and  a crust made from layers of filo, a paper-thin dough used in Greek and Middle Eastern pastries. With a generous coating of cinnamon and sugar, it’s sweet enough to eat as…

A coworker with a gluten and nut allergy inspired me to create these delicious, relatively healthy cookies, filled with oats, dark chocolate, honey, tahini (sesame paste,) and a hint of sea salt and cinnamon.  See the recipe in my latest column in The Knockturnal.

  This is my take on hojarascas, cinnamon-infused cookies from northern Mexico. I used butter in place of the traditional lard or shortening, and added a generous amount of sea salt to balance out the sweetness of the cinnamon sugar coating. In Spanish, hojarasca means dry, fallen leaves. Fittingly, these are crisp and slightly dry, almost…

Parathas, flaky, griddle-cooked flatbreads, are a popular breakfast food in South Asia.  They’re especially delicious stuffed with potatoes (aloo) and spices. My mother-in-law taught me how to make aloo paratha the traditional way, but I decided to put my own twist on the recipe, swapping potatoes for sweet, starchy Japanese yams.  I added two common ingredients…

My favorite challah recipe, adapted from Eveleyn Raab’s cookbook The Clueless Baker, is delicious on its own, but sometimes I like to jazz it up. A few years ago, I added South Asian spices to form “masala challah.”  Here, I sprinkled on black sesame seeds, which not only look stunning but add subtle flavor. When I…

This is an autumn variation on banana bread, adapted from a recipe by Genius Kitchen, with apple butter (a thicker, longer-cooked version of apple sauce) in place of the bananas. I used a simple store-bought apple butter, with no added sugar or spices, but feel free to experiment with using a flavored homemade variety. With butter…

There are two kinds of chocolate in these not-too-sweet shortbread cookies: cocoa powder and white chocolate chunks. Shortbread, which has origins in Scotland, is delightfully smooth and buttery; a high ratio of butter to flour “shortens” the gluten strands in the dough, producing tender cookies. The dough is often baked as one large circle and cut into…

Garnished with fresh peach slices and toasted pecans, this is a summertime twist on my recipe for mini tarts with Greek yogurt mousse and chocolate shortbread crust. For the filling, which is a lighter, healthier version of chocolate mousse, I swapped Greek yogurt for quark, a yogurt-like cheese from Germany. Creamy and slightly tangy, quark…

In my latest column in The Knockturnal, I wrote about a new fixture at my weekly pizza nights: garlic knots brushed with two coats of extra-garlicky basil and walnut pesto, one before baking and one right after. The  pesto adds oomph to this classic pizza accompaniment, which is simple (and fun) to prepare at home using pizza…

The idea for these flavorful pretzel rolls came to me when I tutored a group of children over the summer. After weeks of providing store-bought pretzels as a snack, I decided to surprise the kids with a homemade treat. I adapted my favorite soft pretzel recipe from Chowhound, and added some “everything” bagel seasonings: dried onion…